May 14, 2012

Posted by ANDY aka GHoooSTSI can’t even front: this is one of my favourite episodes of CommanderCast, ever.

How did that happen? Well, first of all we had show notes made entirely out of gunshots… what could be harder than that? Then I hooked up a roster of guests from all corners of the Commander community: myself providing a nonstop torrent of gibberish and screaming catchphrases, Justin bringing his judge knowledge and EDH Cube perspective, Derfington dropping science on Pimpology and then to round out the squad we have a blast from the past with Angry Graybeard bringing his wisdom and experience from his years as a wily veteran. This four-man tactical podcasting team storms your speakers this week with a show of dizzying heights and terrifying, depressing lows. All things considered, I had a lot of fun recording it and I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed talking.

What was the big deal with this week’s show? Well, consider the following:

1) Graybeard rapped.

2) Justin got confused a few times throughout (drunk/stoned? Both probably) and gave us some great bloopers, not all of which made it onto the show.

3) We had real topics! There should be something for everyone here, no doubt in my mind about that.

17:25 to 32:00: Pimpology: Keeping with the academic tone of Doucheology, we’re continuing into Pimpology where the Grand Imperial Celestial Archduke of Pimpology and King of All The Arts, Derfington, is here to help us. While I kinda think that ‘pimping’ a deck is pretty much just the Magic Player equivalent of wearing overly-fancy jewelry, we still all engage in it in some manner. We’re looking at pimping out decks, as Commander players are known to do, and explaining our thoughts on various elements of pimping decks. How can you do up your decks rightwise? Let us run down the ways:

Digital Alters: You’ve probably seen some of these amazing proxies (which are way cooler than a lot of the boring garbage WotC puts on cards); digital proxies let you go into full-tilt no-limit creativity and maybe even save money.

Brionne’s sick articles (part one and two) on producing digital proxies: Get down with it or go to hell

STRATEGY SEGMENTS

32:16 to 47:30:False Idols: Goodstuff: My argument in this week’s False Idols is that the notion of ‘goodstuff’ is pretty much an oxymoron. From a strictly strategy point of view, ‘Goodstuff’ decks are a diluted mess that’s going to be able to do a lot of stuff, but never as well as a focused deck can pull away with it’s gameplan. In this segment my co-hosts decide that my argument isn’t worth burying and we run down the overall weakness of ‘Goodstuff’, and why you should stay away from it.

47:44 to 1:01:22:How To Lose Games: Certain behaviours during games just end up punting you in the dick and leave you hobbling away from the table, being all “uuGGGhhHhHhhh… m-m-my diiiiick”. In this segment, we discuss these behaviours that we’ve found ourselves engaging in and consistently costing us games. What kind of strategy pitfalls have we fallen into repeatedly before we learned to jump it? Listen and learn from our laughable mistakes, save yourself a lot of time and lost games.

Mulligans: Perhaps the most-overlooked, least-understood element of Magic as a whole, Mulligans are still important in EDH (even with flexible rules from group to group) and still result in people winning or losing games.

Being Too Aggressive: Calvin forgive us. Sometimes, coming out too fast and hard scares others and gets you killed. Make sure you can finish the job.

Non-Focusfire Aggro: Related to the above, I find good, solid aggro play usually involves assassinating single players; avoiding this for various reasons usually gets us killed.

Not Pacing Your Resources:“Don’t blow your load”. We’ve said it before and we expand on it here.

Policing The Game: If a threat is aimed elsewhere, it’s not really a threat. Don’t get worried about everything your opponents are playing, it’s not all coming at you.

Not Paying Attention: Sometimes, you forget minor details like your opponent has infinite mana. Slow it down and pay attention a bit.

TECHNOLOGY SEGMENTS

1:01:39 to 1:28:00:Bad Cards We Love: We talk about some cards that, despite being awful, just keep ending up in decks. Justin, Graybeard and my man Derf take us on a wild safari of true garbage cards.